[A hundred years of physicians' professional organization: an overview]

The impressive advances of the natural sciences in the 19th century was in Germany accompanied by the formation of a medical profession that clearly separated itself from other healthcare providers and increasingly claimed autonomy from governmental agencies. But due to the opposition of the state governments who felt their jurisdiction over the healthcare system was threatened, the plan to create a legally supported Reich Physicians' Chamber (Reichsärztekammer) failed at the end of the 19th century. It remained the responsibility of teh German Physicians' Congress (Deutscher Arztetag) to establish consistent standards for medical professional activities in the form of a legally non-binding Code of Professional Conduct. During the Weimar Republic physicians' politics -- within a socio-political context that many felt was hostile towards the medial profession -- was characterized by the pursuit of the medical profession. By establishing the Reich Physicians' Ordinance (Reichsärzteordnung) in 1935 the Nazi state fulfilled a long-cherished desire of the German medical profession. After 1945 regional physicians' chambers and panel fund physicians' unions (Kassenärztliche Vereinigungen) in the form of corporate bodies under public law could rapidly be set up in the western zones of occupied Germany, while emerging structures of medical self-government in the Soviet occupied zone were readily smashed.